Saturday, April 5, 2008

A report released yesterday by the Investigative Project discusses the efforts by Columbus resident Anisa Abd El Fattah (aka Caroline Keeble, would-be Columbus Public Schools Board member) on behalf of the Iranian mullahocracy, which she has said is a “truly democratic” regime. While still Director of Public Affairs for HAMAS front (and since closed) United Association for Studies and Research (UASR), Fattah even moderated a panel discussion advocating for opening relations with the “Axis of Evil” member and state sponsor of terrorism.

Before looking what the report says, it bears reminding readers that Fattah recently appeared at a conference for Anjoman Islami, an Iranian-backed group which FBI Director Louis Freeh identified in congressional testimony as a domestic terror threat. Anjoman Islami/Muslim Student Association-Persian Speaking Group is also one of the leading purveyors of anti-Jewish hate literature and activities in the world.

Here’s the relevent excerpt from the IPT report (pp. 4-5; footnotes in the original):

Anisa Abd El Fattah, who served as a member of CAIR’s board of directors, has led its campaign to rehabilitate Iran in the United States. In a series of articles and interviews in 1998–2000, she portrayed Iran as a moderate, democratic, and unfairly demonized nation.

For example, in a June 1998 letter to the editor of the Washington Times, she wrote:

The United States has only one strategic asset in the Middle East, namely Israel. This is ludicrous when the region consists of nearly 25 other countries, mostly Arabian. Iran, though not Arabian, is by far the most prosperous and stable of them all. It is also the only one of these countries that is truly democratic. In fact, an Iranian representative chairs the Organization of the Islamic Conference, a representative body of the Muslim world.26

Abd El Fattah co-hosted a panel sponsored by UASR at the 1999 AMC convention in Crystal City, Virginia. The panel, entitled “U.S. and Iran, Time to Talk,” was scheduled to feature Iranian Ambassador to the United Nations Sayyid Hadi Najad Hossenian, but he was barred from the event by the State Department.27 Advising the audience that Hossenian would not appear, Abd El Fattah spoke out against the pro-Israel pundits who she claimed were responsible for Hossenian’s exclusion. “I don’t know about you, but what that tells me is that I have a challenge; and that challenge is to speak louder than them [the pro-Israel groups], be more active than they are. They love Israel. We love America, and we also love Iran,” she said.28

In fact, here is Anisa Abd El Fattah’s entire June 25, 1998, letter to the editor to the Washington Times:

On June, 22 you published an Op-Ed piece by Kenneth Timmerman, “No time to play nice with Iran.” The sole focus of this column is that if Iran makes a dime anywhere, it will invest that dime in nuclear arms. This, Mr. Timmerman fears, would have “devastating consequences for U.S. national security and for our allies in the Middle East.”

Such fears are the very reason the United States has only one strategic asset in the Middle East, namely Israel. This is ludicrous when the region consists of nearly 25 other countries, mostly Arabian. Iran, though not Arabian, is by far the most prosperous and stable of them all. It is also the only one of these countries that is truly democratic. In fact, an Iranian representative chairs the Organization of the Islamic Conference, a representative body of the Muslim world.

Iran will sell oil, whether it be to U.S. companies or not. It also will develop the necessary armaments to secure itself against other nuclear powers in the Middle East. The recent nuclear tests conducted by Pakistan and India prove that we are incapable of policing the proliferation of nuclear arms. In addition, we do not have the moral right to deny security and deterrence to one country while we ship arms to another, especially in the same region.

We need pragmatic and effective policies in the Middle East that serve America’s enlightened interest. Normalizing relations with Iran would be a good place to start.

ANISA ABD EL FATTAHFalls Church

So she vows that Iran will develop nuclear weapons to “secure itself against other nuclear powers in the Middle East” — Israel being the only country fitting that description — and that we have “no moral right” to deprive “Axis of Evil” member Iran of nuclear weapons while supporting the only “truly democratic” country in the Middle East — Israel. Instead, she believes that we should reward Iran’s support for terrorism throughout the Middle East, most notably Hezbollah which at the time had killed hundreds of American peacekeepers and other military personnel, by normalizing relations with the Iranian mullahocracy.

In another letter to the editor by Fattah published by the Columbus Dispatch this past September, she identified Israeli citizens — men, woman and children alike — as legitimate targets for terrorist attacks, saying:

There are no Israeli civilians in Gaza, the West Bank and East Jerusalem. There are only illegal Jewish settlers, who, by Israeli law, are also citizen-soldiers. They are heavily armed with fully automatic weapons.